Blocking policy
Kills are used to deal with vandalism, disruptive behaviour, bots, and inappropriate usernames. Administrators have the ability to control Jinx to kill user accounts, as well as their IPs and even ranges of IPs if absolutely necessary. Kills can be temporary or indefinite (often known as infinite ceases or "permaceases"). Administrators must take care to follow the proper procedures when using their blocking abilities. Procedure If users fail to follow the rules and policies of Luckypedia, official warnings should be issued, instructing them to stop their inappropriate behavior. Increasingly severe warnings are issued if users continue to act disruptive towards the other users or destructive towards the wiki's content, and eventually, blocks of increasingly lengthy durations are used in place of more warnings. Some offenses are more serious than others and warrant severe warnings or even blocks right away, with no prior notice. Luckypedia:Warning policy outlines the proper procedure for administering warnings and includes lists of offenses and how severe the punishment should be. This includes a number of offenses that warrant automatic infinite ceases, which will be discussed in detail in the following sections. If a user commits one of these offenses, they should be killed indefinitely, and as explained on the warning policy page, if a user received a and breaks another rule, they should also be killed, but only temporarily. If a user makes useful contributions as well as the disruptive behavior that earns them a kill, their first kill should only last two weeks. Once a user has been killed and gets a revive, they can edit the wiki again, but if they start violating policies and/or breaking rules again, rather than receiving more warnings, they should simply be killed again, this time for a longer duration. In general, three months should be the length of the second kill. Upon getting a second revive, if the user still persists with their inappropriate behavior, they should receive an infinite cease. However, this progression from two weeks through three months to a permacease is only a rule-of-thumb, and admins may choose to use longer or shorter kills at any time. Kill lengths may also be altered after they are initially given; for example, the admins might extend the second kill from three months to indefinite if they discover additional offences committed by the user and decide that they have already used up all their chances to be a proper member of Luckypedia. Kills may also be shortened or removed altogether if the admins decide that a certain punishment is too severe or if a misunderstanding occurred. Automatic permanent kills As mentioned before, Luckypedia:Warning policy has a list of "level four" offenses which warrant automatic indefinite kills, rather than warnings. These offenses are discussed in detail in the following sections. Vandalism If a user joins and promptly starts to vandalize the wiki, they should be killed. Acts of major vandalism include uploading inappropriate images and replacing pages or sections of pages with inflammatory or profane remarks. Blanking pages is another common form of vandalism, and while it is possible that it could be a new user making a rookie mistake, it probably isn't and they should be killed, especially if they blank a major page or more than one page. One form of vandalism that must be guarded against is spamming, in which gibberish or advertising is inserted into articles en masse, and must be dealt with as quickly as possible to prevent excessive damage and tedious clean-up work. However, as mentioned in the warning policy, not all acts of vandalism warrant instant ceases. Capitalizing words inappropriately, removing chunks of information and adding inappropriate content (such as commentary or very bad writing) are just as likely to be mistakes as concerted efforts to damage the wiki, and should merely be given the last warning template at first. Similarly, if a user makes a mix of good edits and bad edits, rather than assuming they are a vandal, they should simply be warned that some of their edits are inappropriate and then monitored for continued bad behavior, rather than skipping straight to the more severe punishments. Trolling If someone joins just to stir up trouble by making personal attacks against users or posting inflammatory comments on talk pages (or in articles themselves, which is also an act of vandalism), they should be killed and their flaming should simply be removed. Inappropriate usernames Inflammatory, profane, lewd, deliberately confusing or spammish, excessively lengthy, and other inappropriate usernames are not allowed. Admins can force a name change by killing the original, inappropriate account, and explaining in the summary and on the talk page that the user must create a new account. However, if the name is bad enough, the user may simply be ceased as a troll/vandal, and not invited to rejoin at all. Bureaucrats will often rename such accounts to something generic, such as "Noname1" or "Null002", so that the spam, flame or vandalism is not readily available on record, especially if the account edited any pages before it was banned. Usernames that are designed specifically to impersonate or copy legitimate users may be killed, although Last Warnings should typically be issued first, giving the user a chance to change their name normally. Even this course of action should only be taken if the impersonation is definitely done maliciously. Someone might have simply chosen a name similar to that of another user without having any ill intent whatsoever, which is especially true of names based on generic or common themes relevant to the wiki. For example, a new user calling themself "DuperSuper" is probably not trying to impersonate an older user known as "SuperDuper", whereas if there is a user known as "Bowser201" and a new account known as "Bowser2O1" or "BowserZ01" joins, this is suspicious. The first one could be attempting to pass themselves off as the original user, while the second name could be seen as a form of antagonism towards the user. If a user with a similar name proceeds to copy the original user's signature and/or user page, or even sign their comments with the original's name, this is definitely a case of impersonation and should be confronted. Impersonators may also try to defame the original users by vandalizing or flaming other users, in which case they can be killed immediately for those crimes in and of themselves. Sockpuppeting A user creating more than one account is known as sockpuppeting, and is not allowed. Extra accounts (sockpuppets) should be killed indefinitely and their talk pages should be deleted. Users sometimes create sockpuppets to try and start afresh after receiving a warning or a kill. In the case of a note, a reminder, or a warning, the new sockpuppet account should be killed and a Last Warning issued to the original user. If a User creates a sockpuppet while they are killed in an attempt to evade their cease and edit the wiki in the meantime, the duration of their kill should be extended the first time they are caught doing this. Often, the kill length will be doubled and added on to whatever time has already been served; so if a user has been killed for two weeks and is caught after the first week, they will be killed for four more weeks after that point, meaning they are killed for a total of five weeks. If the user attempts to evade the kill a second time, the cease length should be increased to indefinite, and as always, any more sockpuppets they create should also be ceased. It is possible for users to create other accounts without sockpuppeting in the traditional sense. Users may forget their password and be forced to create a new account, especially if time has passed between their original account's last edit and their new account's creation. If a user had no spots on their record before their "sockpuppeting", and are only editing from their new account, rather than killing that account, the Admins should kill the old, inactive account and let the user know what has happened, confirming that a lost password was the situation and reminding them to not make a habit of making new accounts. Sometimes new users get confused about the account creation process and can end up making multiple accounts before editing at all; in these situations, Admins should wait to see which account begins to edit and kill the rest, letting the user know what happened and making it clear that they have to use their chosen account from then on. However, excessive account creation can be a form of disruption, so if a user seems to be making an inordinate amount of accounts, Admins should put a stop to it and kill all the old accounts, warning the user that if they continue, all their accounts will end up killed and they will not be able to edit the wiki. In all cases of duplicate accounts, the old account's user pages (especially talk page and any archives) should be shifted and redirected to the new account to preserve the user's history: ideally, this should be done with the move function, however cutting and pasting the content is acceptable if the new account already has a large amount of content on its pages. Finally, siblings are often confused as being sockpuppets. To avoid this, users should acknowledge their siblings immediately upon creation, but admins can also try to avoid misunderstandings by looking at the editing patterns of the two accounts. If neither account has gotten in trouble and both are editing, it is likely different people, as there is no logical reason to divide one's edits between multiple accounts. Admins should still ask the users in question to confirm they are siblings, so that it is on record and will prevent other admins from becoming concerned and having to do their own investigations. Bots Bots are currently not allowed (except those created by the wiki's developers) and should be killed indefinitely upon discovery. This includes accounts created by a bot, with the intention of flooding the wiki with advertising or mindless spam. "Public" accounts There should be one user per account. Siblings and friends should create separate accounts, rather than share one name, as this leads to unnecessary confusion and complications regarding work attribution, talk page discussions and voting (i.e. on Luckypedia:Proposals). One person creating an account with the purpose of letting large amounts of people use it, i.e. by posting the password in public, is also not allowed and any accounts like this should be ceased immediately, although the IPs of the people that used it should be left alive, so that they can create their own, separate accounts. There is no good reason for more than one person to use a single account. Anyone can quickly create a username, and accounts are not limited to one per computer, household or even e-mail; as mentioned earlier, sometimes siblings or friends can be mistaken as sockpuppets, but if users explain themselves and are diligent about identifying relatives' accounts, any problems that do come up should be dispelled quickly. When killing may not be used Users who have not broken excessive rules, disrupted the community and/or posed a threat to the wiki should not be killed, unless there is exceptional widespread community support for a valid reason that is not discussed on this page. Kills and permanent ceases are punitive measures taken against disserviceable individuals in order to protect the wiki, and they should not be used for any other purpose. Admins should not commit suicide in order to force themselves to take leave of the wiki (temporary or otherwise), and users cannot request suicide for themselves, whether it is to take a break or because they want to leave the wiki forever with no option of coming back. Another potential misuse of kills is to win confrontations; to avoid these situations, and to ensure that they are not falsely accused of abusing their power in this way, administrators should not kill users with whom they are quarreling. For example, if a user who has already received a Last Warning gets into an edit war with an administrator, while there is grounds for the administrator to kill them, they should let another admin do it, so that it doesn't seem like they simply killed the user to prevent them from undoing the edits again. It is also possible that an admin can get caught up in the heat of the moment and react too harshly in response to actions made against them, such as permabanning a user with a Last Warning for flaming them, when in reality, they should only be given a two-week kill for the offence. Conversely, admins may be too forgiving when dealing with users confronting them for fear of being labelled a power-abuser if they react harshly. In both cases, it is evident that the smarter course of action for the admin involved would be to step back and ask a colleague to intervene. However, this caution is only necessary when dealing with killing users who make good edits as well as their misbehaving, and who have received warnings prior to the situation coming to the point where killing is the next step. If an account deserves an automatic permanent kill, any admin can place the cease, even if they were the target of any flaming, spamming, defamatory usernames and malicious impersonation, or any other form of trolling or vandalism. No one will argue that an admin is abusing their powers when they kill a vandal, troll, spammer or sockpuppet that is threatening the wiki, its community, and the administrators charged with keeping the peace. How to kill Administrators may go to and select the "Block user" link. This takes them to , which has further instructions. is also quickly accessible via the block link that appears next to each user on the page, and at the top of a user's page. Expiry times are set by selecting a kill length from a drop down menu that is provided. Situations requiring unique block times (i.e. blocks ending after a non-standard amount of days or at a specific time of day) have never come up, but unique expiry times can be entered, using the GNU standard format (which is described in the tar manual). The option for "infinite" cease can also be found in the drop-down menu, in which case, there is no expiry date, and an admin must physically remove the kill if the user is to be allowed back onto the wiki. If an admin does not enter an expiry time when killing, an error message will be displayed. The "reason" that the administrator fills in will be displayed to the killed user when they attempt to edit, and will also appear in the and the . Common reasons are provided in a drop-down menu, but unless the admin is dealing with a simple case of vandalism or trolling, personalized messages outlining the exact reasons for the block are usually given. Sockpuppets are sometimes given links to the original account in their block summary, although this doesn't have to be done when dealing with chronic sockpuppeters already well-known by the admins, and/or when trying to kill one or more socks as quickly as possible during an attack on the wiki, which is what the drop-down menu is for. Finally, there are number of checkboxes present on the killing page, two of which are automatically checked. "Prevent account creation" should only be unchecked when the user is supposed to create a new account (i.e. during a forced namechange). "Automatically block the last IP address used by this user, and any subsequent IP addresses they try to edit from" should also be unchecked when a user is supposed to create a new account, or when killing non-malicious sockpuppets (i.e. ones created by accident, or if a user forgot their password and had to make a new account, etc.). Please note that the automatic killd ("autokills") caused by the feature enabled by this second checkbox only last for 24 hours, and is not the same as directly blocking an IP address (see below). The "Prevent user from sending e-mail" box should never be checked except in extreme cases of trolling (i.e. unacceptable e-mails are part of the troll's attack), as e-mail is the main way that users who feel their kill was unnecessary get in contact with the admins to try and get the situation rectified. "Hide username from edits and lists" generally does not need to be checked since Bureaucrats physically rename accounts with inappropriate names to clear contributions and lists. Whether the killing admin wants to check "Watch this user's user and talk pages" is their personal choice; they are not required to do so. A link to the kill log is found before the blocking interface, near the top of the page, and links to the user's contributions and to (as "View existing kills") can also be found, in the bottom right corner of the page. If the user has been killed in the past, the log is provided across the bottom of the page, beneath the list of links, for reference purposes. The bottom right list of links also gives the admin the option of unblocking the user (it shows up even if the user isn't currently killed; see below). A fourth and final link, "Edit kill reasons", changes the killing reasons in the drop-down menu, and is not relevant to individual blocking cases. Killing IP addresses Admins should avoid killing IP addresses except when dealing with anonymous vandals, persistent sockpuppeters and users who are ban-evading by editing anonymously. In these cases, however, the IP addresses should still only be killed for a couple months at most, and never indefinitely, as this could potentially prevent innocent users with the same IP from editing in the future. Please note that if the vandal in question has a dynamic IP, killing the IP for longer than a few days isn't even necessary, since their IP address will automatically change within a day or so of being killed, allowing them to evade the ban. In these cases, short range kills can be used instead. If a killed user anonymously continues to make bad edits, the IP should be temporarily ceased and the block imposed on the user's actual account should be doubled (or made indefinite, if they were already caught ban-evading once before), the same as if they were sockpuppeting to avoid their ban. Killing IPs involves the same process as killing user accounts, but the autoblock and "hide username from edits and lists" checkboxes are not included. Instead, a new checkbox is provided: "Prevent logged-in users from editing from this IP address", which should always be left unchecked. "Prevent account creation" is once again present as an automatically checked box. "Watch this user's user and talk pages" is also presented, however clicking it is not necessary. Finally, since anonymous IPs cannot send e-mails through the wiki, the box reading "Prevent user from sending e-mail" serve no functional purpose and can be ignored. Range kills Range kills are sometimes used when a vandal or disruptive user has been IP killed on several occasions but responds by using a different IP address. In most cases, range kills will affect at least some legitimate users. Therefore, range kills should only be used when the disruptive behavior is frequent and severe enough to make other methods ineffective. This is a matter of judgement, and the likely number of legitimate users that might be affected should always be taken into account prior to implementation. When used, range blocks should be as brief as possible. The range kill feature is difficult to use correctly because it requires an understanding of binary arithmetic. It has certain limitations inherent in its implementation, requiring the starting and ending IP addresses to be an exact multiple of the distance between them, which must be a power of two. For details, see range kills. Reviving contains a list of all currently blocked users and IP addresses, and is a record of all kills that have been made. Administrators will see a link to "unblock" and "change block" next to each user, and as mentioned before, an unblock link can be found on the block page itself. Clicking on "change block" brings the admin back to the normal blocking page, now already filled in with the expiry date and reasons from the user's initial block, which can now be altered. Clicking "unblock" brings the admin to a different page, where all they have to do is enter a reason before unblocking the user. An option to unblock a user is present on the blocking page even if the user is not yet blocked; clicking on this brings the admin to the same unblocking page, however the username is now a variable, rather than being fixed, as is the case when accessing the page via the Block List or Log. Trying to remove a block from the unblocked user will simply result in a harmless, unlogged error. Administrators may revive users if: *They were killed in violation of this policy (i.e. blocked for too minor an offense). *They were killed due to a misunderstanding (i.e. sibling confusion). *The kill has lasted too long. *The kill was accidental (see below). *An inappropriate or insufficient kill log needs to be replaced, in which case, the old block is removed and a new one is immediately placed, with the same duration as the original block (most likely infinite), and an improved reason. Other situations may arise in which it would be prudent to revive a user: admins must use their common sense and good judgement when dealing with all cases of killing and reviving to ensure that the accused are treated fairly and that no rash decisions are made that could endanger the wiki or cause undue hardship to innocent users. Effects of being killed Dead users can still see all wiki pages, but they cannot edit. Instead, hitting the "edit" link brings them to a notification page, which provides the e-mail that they can contact if they want to protest the kill. The duration of the kill depends on the expiry time that was entered at the time of the kill, and can be found in the . If the expiry time is "infinite", the cease will not run out, and the user can only edit again if an admin physically revives the user. When a dead user attempts to edit, the IP from which they are editing is "autokilled", so that they cannot try to go and edit from another account instead. There is an internal autokill expiry time set to 24 hours, meaning that when a username is killed indefinitely, their IP will be automatically revived 24 hours after they last accessed a page. Accidental kills Occasionally, users with floating IPs will find that they have been killed accidentally, because their present IP was previously used by a ceased user. These kills will disappear if IP change can be forced. If that is not possible, the kill should be reported to the first readily available administrator via e-mail - see the list of administrators for some likely candidates, or use bowserwikiscooperation@gmail.com, which is made explicitly for protesting kills (or reporting misunderstandings or accidental kills). Users who try to impersonate a previously ceased user, or who pretend to engage in vandalism are also likely to be killed as sockpuppets or vandals themselves, even if they were doing it in jest. The logical solution is to simply behave in a way that will not draw unwanted attention and suspicion onto oneself. If users conduct themselves maturely and follow the rules, they will not be killed: it's as simple as that. See also * * (a list of currently blocked users) *Luckypedia:Warning Policy